Bevlyn Khoo

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Have an Ox-piscious year ahead!

Ok, this is thick-skinned I know. But instead of getting random birthday gifts which I won’t have much use for (and hence feel so guilty for not using them at all), I was thinking, why don’t I just come up with a wish list for this year round! Here we go:

1. The Simply Red 25 hits cd
2. English-French electronic dictionary
3. French storybooks (for children)
4. Thomas Dutronc’s album “Comme Un Manouche”
5. Bluetooth headpiece for my mobile phone
6. This album by Ryosuke Nakanishi
7. Dark chocolates (no alcohol pls)
8. Treat me to a round of chilli and black pepper crabs. And butter crabs too. I can finish them trust me.
9. To my silly and sarcastic friends (esp Tien-yao), pls say nice things about me for once on my birthday.  Words you may use include ’slim and pretty, young and talented’, merci.
10. Surprise me with anything pleasant.

One more month to go. I’m ready for it

I am so in love with this group of photographers. They call themselves the WPN (Wedding Photographers Network), and they’re really the best wedding photographers in Singapore. What amazes me is, they’re really competitors in their own field, yet they’re able to bunch themselves together, teach and learn from each other, pass on clients’ contacts and basically, be friends. Can you feel the love too?

One of the photographers Eadwine forwarded this to me, totally made me laugh: http://eadwine.livejournal.com/746695.html

And this video is cool! http://www.vimeo.com/2916452

I love good photos, and I think I’m really blessed to have the good fortune to know these wacky and talented photographers while doing wedding gigs:

Gabriel Mendes, Greymatter by KC, William Chua, Feldberyl by Wansheng, Expressively Joho by Jonathan, 9 Frames by Gilbert Chua, and etc

Thanks to Gary, I love this ‘talk’ song now. When I first hear the original, I was not keen to take it on, but Gary’s music arrangement made my emotions flow for the song. The recording went very well, so we decided to re-record song #1 because we felt it could be better recorded. I’m so thankful to get the 2nd chance!

I had wanted to hypnotise myself with a movie after the recording, but it turned out to be a bad choice of movie - Changeling. Angelina Jolie’s acting was really excellent, but the true story is so disturbing I was beating myself up for not choosing a light-hearted one.

Breathe.

We recorded at another studio today because Desmond was still down with diarrhea

I am quite a stick in the mud when it comes to environment for delivering a performance. I am so used to Desmond’s studio now, and to go to another studio for recording takes some getting used to. But today being the 2nd day at this other studio, I felt more relaxed; it helped that the producer was very very nice and patient with me. Extremely patient people really amaze me. Because I tend to feel impatient on their behalf

Recording this song was not enjoyable because I don’t like the song ha. I just gotta keep imagining I am very much in sweet love, and it got kind of tiring to keep faking this emotion for a couple of hours you know.

Ok, so after a weekend of weddings and meetup with many people, I’m back at recording. It was interesting last night because I was recording a Spanish song! I had found my super pretty Spanish teacher, Alicia, through the internet, had 4 lessons with her on basic Spanish pronunciation, and sang and practised this song with her.  I think what I enjoyed more was her telling me about the Spanish people and culture, and the sharing of our takes on the French and Italien people :p

So I brought Alicia to the studio, and she told the producer to stop me whenever I got the diction wrong. It was a great experience cos even the producer was trying to learn Spanish from her lol. We wanted to record another song after that but it was close to midnight and while recording all I could feel was zzzzz…so we’ll continue tonight

I’ll like to share a song which has been touching me for the past couple of months. This is by a renowned Japanese pianist (Yukie Nishimura) titled “When my heart is full“.

It’s amazing how, without words, this piece of music can provoke so much emotions of love, of happiness, of sadness, of reminiscence…flipping my heart around

Sample her music here.

What I see when I record (Click on pictures to enlarge)

Ok I am so over the moon now. We re-recorded that song meant for day 4, and I nailed it in 1.5hrs. If that were to mean anything, it probably means I’ve put on many years and gained many life experiences over just 1 day.

So we decided to continue with another song of similar theme, since I was in such getting-over-old-loves mood. And we finished the song in another 1.5hrs. Woohoooo! I felt like I’ve attained nirvana, like I’m so over lost loves, so zen.

Anyway, I was told that Roger Wang arranged one of the songs. I love love love his arrangement for my song, and voila, how lovely to hear and see him on Utube play one of my fav songs, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the mirror”!:

Shawn (on my left), my percussionist friend who came in to record the djembe and shaker for one of the songs, used his camera phone to take some photos yesterday (Check out Shawn’s website, I love his online guitar lessons haha). Yes, studios are dark, supposedly to set all of us ‘in the mood’. On my left is Desmond, the veteran studio engineer who had recorded for Sandy Lam and other regional acts before. It’s nice to hear some stories from him heh.

I just had suggestions from ‘higher authorities’ that I should relearn Japanese. Alamak!!! I feel like life’s playing me around. I hardly have time to work on French anymore!

We didn’t finish recording this particular song today

We took 3 hours before I got the right ‘feel’ and recorded some takes. In the end, my producer-friend decided to call it a day, cos he saw no point continuing. This song is really written for someone with more life and love experiences, and hence his conclusion is, I just don’t have enough of that. I was like –> I’m not quite sure if it’s a good thing to be too jaded which is good for this song, or not.

Nevermind. Hopefully it’ll be better when we continue on Thu. We’re roping the other producer in on Thu for this song cos ahem, he’s more mature than either of us. It’s a lousy feeling. But I’d rather we take 2 steps back to get a better recording!